Aikenhead Sundial

Image: © Ian Dodds Taken: 24 Aug 2022

This monumental sundial is fairly close to the similarly huge Aikenhead House in King's Park, Glasgow. It got transported here in the 1930s shortly after part of the original Aikenhead estate was gifted to the city by a developer. Presumably the developer had realised that such big profits would arise from the building of thousands of houses on the former estate's land that this grand gesture could be afforded. Whilst undoubtedly impressive, the sundial is also a bit silly. Four very unfeminine-looking bare-breasted creatures support an octagon, which in turn supports four bearded faces who share a silly tall hat. This is only the start of the silliness though. Each side of the octagon has its own sundial. (Sadly one or two of the gnomons - the metal bits that cast the shadow - are missing, and all the rest have been twisted out of shape by vandals.) At least one, probably two, and perhaps more of these sundials are superfluous however. The sun only rises due East and sets due West at the equinoxes. In the summer the sun rises in the NorthEast, and sets in the NorthWest, both of these positions becoming more Northerly as the summer solstice is approached. Somewhere online, a fairly official looking site says that at 56° North - which is roughly the latitude of Glasgow - the sun rises at 42° and sets at 318° on the summer solstice (North being 0°). I'm nowhere near clever enough to do the maths, but am certain that this means the time could be told even on the longest day without reference to the full eight sundials! The thinking must have been to do it because they could. Well, in the 1600s at least - as this apparently is something of a 'tribute' sundial to a famous one made back then. Fair enough I suppose.

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